Correct – grell tentacles carry a paralyzing toxin. This came up in the strip ages ago, when Bob was turning enemies to stone and Grell was paralyzing them – meaning that they weren’t leaving corpses around to be re-animated by Lewie and Kila.

To be fair, they might well have forced the potion on her. Once they have the snake-hair, they seem more vulnerable to control by Ranna. Now if someone could just cook up some de-gorgoning serum, that would be really useful (along with a continent-wide stone-to-flesh spell).

Well, I don’t think there are many who would take that potion willingly, unless they were already rannites. And it does seem to have a very quick effect, see for that what happened with Sahar for example…(http://yafgc.net/comic/2880-the-serpents-vengeance/)
And really, just why not use it on someone who has a significant control of magic, and wouldn’t make a good mistress anyway?

Well, Meegs always seemed to have some sort of hidden darkness to her.
I mean, she dressed up like Maleficient once. She still sided with the heroes, but it did make me doubt her stance. Plus, some of her research were somewhat dubious, if I recall correct.

That being said, she might have been forced, as she is a powerful mage.

I took me a while, but now I figured out what was so strange about this strip. I mean apart from the fact, that Meegs still has her original hair next to the snakes. The rest who drank the cocktail converted quick and seemed to be perfectly content with their actions afterwards. I would say, Meegs looks rather unhappy, as if she would be doing something she doesn’t really want, perhaps even regrets already…
Maybe she didn’t get a full dose?